Bookmark the Blog


WELCOME TO THE HYUNAM-DONG BOOKSHOP

One of our recommended books is Welcome to the Hyuman-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum

The Korean smash hit available for the first time in English, a slice-of-life novel for readers of Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library and Gabrielle Zevin’s The Storied Life of AJ Fikry.

Yeongju is burned out. She did everything she was supposed to: go to school, marry a decent man, get a respectable job. Then it all fell apart. In a leap of faith, she abandons her old life, quits her high-flying career, and follows her dream: opening a bookshop. In a quaint neighborhood in Seoul, surrounded by books, Yeongju and her customers take refuge.

read more

CONFRONTATIONS

One of our recommended books is Confrontations by Simone Antangana Bekono

A bold, unsettling, surprisingly tender debut novel for readers of Jesmyn Ward and Nightcrawling.

Salomé Atabong is the sixteen-year-old daughter of a Cameroonian father and a Dutch mother, living in the Netherlands. She arrives at a juvenile detention center to start a six-month sentence for a violent crime, which she did commit but does not regret. Expected to visit with a racist psychologist and perform her apologies, Salomé refuses to atone. But even if Salomé could get home, it would be no refuge: her father has recently been diagnosed with liver cancer, and her elder sister Miriam’s main preoccupation is to get out of the village as soon as possible.

read more

WHY WE READ

One of our recommended books is Why We Read by Shannon Reed

A hilarious and incisive exploration of the joys of reading from a teacher, bibliophile and Thurber Prize finalist.

We read to escape, to learn, to find love, to feel seen. We read to encounter new worlds, to discover new recipes, to find connection across difference or simply to pass a rainy afternoon. No matter the reason, books have the power to keep us safe, to challenge us, and perhaps most importantly, to make us more fully human.

Shannon Reed, a long-time teacher, lifelong reader and The New Yorker contributor, gets it. With one simple goal in mind,

read more

BARRACOON

One of our recommended books is Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston and Ibram X. Kendi

In the first middle grade offering from Zora Neale Hurston and Ibram X. Kendi, young readers are introduced to the remarkable and true-life story of Cudjo Lewis, one of the last survivors of the Atlantic human trade, in an adaptation of the internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed Barracoon.

This is the life story of Cudjo Lewis, as told by himself.

Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America to be enslaved, eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis was then the only person alive to tell the story of his capture and bondage–fifty years after the Atlantic human trade was outlawed in the United States.

read more

SMALL WORLD

From bestselling author Laura Zigman comes a heartfelt novel about two offbeat and newly divorced sisters who move in together as adults—and finally reckon with their childhood.

A year after her divorce, Joyce is settling into being single again. She likes her job archiving family photos and videos, and she’s developed a secret comforting hobby: trolling the neighborhood social networking site, Small World, for posts that help solve life’s easiest problems. When her older sister, Lydia, also divorced, calls to tell her she’s moving back east from Los Angeles after almost thirty years away, Joyce invites Lydia to move into her Cambridge apartment.

read more

WE ARE THE LIGHT

One of our recommended books is We Are the Light by Matthew Quick

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook–made into the Academy Award-winning movie starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper–a poignant and hopeful novel about a widower who takes in a grieving teenager and inspires a magical revival in their small town.

Lucas Goodgame lives in Majestic, Pennsylvania, a quaint suburb that has been torn apart by a recent tragedy. Everyone in Majestic sees Lucas as a hero–everyone, that is, except Lucas himself. Insisting that his deceased wife, Darcy, visits him every night in the form of an angel, Lucas spends his time writing letters to his former Jungian analyst,

read more